CES - Computers and hardware

LAS VEGAS--The grandpappy of the torrenting world, BitTorrent, announced yesterday at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show that it will bolster its torrent-managing software later this year with search and playback features. Similar to competitors such as Vuze and Miro, the ecosystem comes as part of the development of Project Chrysalis, an effort to give BitTorrent a more robust feature set and give consumers a seamless workflow from finding content to playing it back. BitTorrent recently announced that it had reached more than 100 million active monthly users.

The new version of BitTorrent is due in a public beta near the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--With the introduction of the Razer BlackWidow and the SteelSeries 6Gv2, PC gaming vendors are finally starting to see the appeal of mechanical keyboards.

Not to be outdone by the competition, Taiwanese gaming accessory manufacturer Tt eSports made an appearance at CES 2011 to show off its new Meka G1 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard.

The simple design coats the entire base layer in a matte black finish and it includes a palm rest that you can remove if your wrists start to get sore.

In terms of keyboarding technology, you get two onboard USB ports for accessories plus a 1.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--While much of the focus on pointing devices went to Microsoft this year for its Touch Mouse, the less profiled accessory company Genius is also here at the show unveiling its own unique mousing solution: the Ring Mouse.

As the name implies, the ring mouse slips right onto your finger. It features a wireless 2.4GHz receiver inside. Using just your thumb, you can control slideshows, PowerPoint slides, and more using two small buttons that act as the left and right clickers on a traditional mouse. For the actual mousing, you simply use the small optical trackpad on top … Read more

Clicky mechanical keyboards, with their Cherry MX switches and robust base units, can be considered a form of keyboard fetishism, but Datamancer's Richard Nagy takes "paraphrenalic technofetishism" to new heights with his custom Victorian computer mods with a steampunk twist.

Check out this Von Slatt revisionist wonder on display at CES 2011. It's a one-off design made specifically for a customer who requested the classic Das Keyboard mechanical peripheral as its core and is built entirely by Nagy's hands. According to the receiver, "the steampunk theme recalls an age when technology was as much 'love and wonder' as 'labor.'"

The artist would not disclose the pricing since each piece is made to order, but Nagy will gladly sell you a DI(mostly)Y keyboard kit to build your own Steampunk/Victorian device!

Click through for more photos of Richard Nagy's Von Slatt keyboard.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Since the review of the Seagate Momentus XT, the first and only mass-produced solid-state hybrid hard drive on the market, I've received many e-mails asking when computer makers will start building it into machines. I have the answer now.

At CES 2011, Seagate demoed the performance of the 7200rpm Momentum XT drive against a regular 5400rpm hard drive. The demonstration was done with two Asus laptops with exactly the same specs, other than the main hard drives.

The demo consists of a script that automatically executed a series of tasks as soon as the computers booted up and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--The 2011 Consumer Electronics Show may be remembered as marking the year that a small U.K. chip designer began to eclipse the largest chipmaker in the world--that would be Intel, of course.

Warren East, chief executive of ARM, sat down with CNET for a few minutes at CES on Thursday to discuss some of the seismic events that took place at CES centered on ARM.

A flurry of big announcements put the ARM chip architecture front and center this year. Those include Microsoft's intention to move its next major release of Windows to ARM, Nvidia's plans … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Intel has urged Microsoft to tailor Windows for smaller devices, to no avail, an executive from the chipmaker said at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"Hey, we tried to get [Microsoft] to do a tablet OS (operating system) for a long time. Us, and others like Dell," said Tom Kilroy, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Sales and Marketing Group, speaking to CNET at an Intel function last night.

Microsoft said this week at CES that its next major release of Windows will run on power-efficient processors from ARM--an Intel rival. This "port&… Read more

LAS VEGAS--While much of last night's CES kick-off keynote by Microsoft centered on huge Kinect sales, Windows Phone 7 features, the latest PCs, and the technical prowess of the next version of Windows, tucked into the presentation was a product that has been largely untouched since its introduction back in 2007.

That would be Microsoft's Surface, a $12,500 table-top, multitouch computer, which has a new version shipping out later this year that's five grand cheaper, has 10 inches of additional screen real estate, more powerful internals, and a drastically thinner underside.

The new unit is four … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Amimon, which is the strongest supporter of the Wireless Home Digital Interface display standard and announced the Asus WAVI earlier this week, demoed at CES 2011 a variety of solutions through which WHDI-enabled devices could potentially change the way we interact with indoor entertainment.

Similar to Intel's WiDi and Sibeam's WirelessHD, WHDI is a technology that allows devices to connect to a HDMI TV wirelessly and transmit audio and video at full HD quality (1080p). The strength of WHDI is the fact that it has almost no latency and, therefore, other than high-def movies, enables interactive applications, … Read more